Winners don’t get the real Woodlawn Cup to keep, but a half size replica (oh, and the Woodlawn Racing Club is defunct). Black Eyed Susans don’t bloom until 2 months after the Preakness. The Old Clubhouse was destroyed in a fire in 1966. They paint the winner’s racing silks on the weathervane. No one on the internet knows why it’s called the Alibi Breakfast.

The forecast for the 137th running of the Preakness Stakes calls for clear, sunny skies. But there’s a cloud hanging over O’Neill that could result in a 180-day suspension and $15,000 fine as a result of a failed test for elevated levels of carbon dioxide in one of his horses.

It was O’Neill’s fourth such failed test since 2006, and a ruling could come next week, when the California Horse Racing Board meets behind closed doors (though no penalty would take effect until after June’s Belmont Stakes).

It’s difficult to imagine a more dissonant note – the apparent pattern of rules-breaking clashing sharply with O’Neill’s easy warmth and charisma.

O’Neill has professed his innocence and filed suit over the most recent failed test, which suggests the banned practice known as “milkshaking,” in which a mixture of bicarbonate of soda, sugar and electrolytes are pumped into a horse’s nostrils to delay the sensation of fatigue and, in turn, boost performance down the stretch.

…

“Milkshaking” – or bicarbonate loading, in more sophisticated terms – gives racehorses an extra buffer against the buildup of lactic acid in the muscles, which causes the sensation of fatigue, according to Rick M. Arthur, equine medical director for the California Horse Racing Board.

It poses little, if any, danger to the horse, Arthur added – assuming the mixture doesn’t seep into a horse’s lungs or isn’t administered in exceedingly high dosages.

But it is banned because it creates an unfair advantage.

And besides, you can’t believe anything you read at the Daily Kaplan anyway.